Control Valves: The Key Component in Managing Process Variability, 1997 Process Control, Electrical & Info. Conference Proceedings
Hundreds of millions of dollars have been spent over the last 15 years to upgrade process control hardware and oftware. In more cases than not, the return on this investment has been minimal. This is especially true if process variability reduction and product quality improvement are used as the analysis criteria. The largest portion of this capital has been invested in Operator interfaces, control algorithms and sensors with very little consideration given to control valves. It is only in the last five years that the importance of the control valve in managing process variability has come to be widely recognized. This paper will: a.) examine some of the problems that are associated with poorly performing control valves, b.) present methods for testing control valve performance in-situ, and c.) offer a dynamic control valve specification that can be used when choosing control valves.
Control Valves: The Key Component in Managing Process Variability, 1997 Process Control, Electrical
